Working memory

Prof. Alan Baddeley, University of York, UK

Prof. Graham J. Hitch, Department of Psychology, University of York, York YO10

5DD, UK

Working memory is a limited capacity part of the human memory system that combines the
temporary storage and manipulation of information in the service of cognition. Short-term
memory refers to information-storage without manipulation and is therefore a component of
working memory. Working memory differs from long-term memory, a separate part of the
memory system with a vast storage capacity that holds information in a relatively more stable
form. According to the multi-component model, working memory includes an executive
controller that interacts with separate short-term stores for auditory-verbal and visuo-spatial
information. The concept of working memory has proved useful in many areas of application
including individual differences in cognition, neuropsychology, normal and abnormal child
development and neuroimaging.
The term working memory is used most frequently to refer to a limited capacity system that is
capable of briefly storing and manipulating information involved in the performance of complex
cognitive tasks such as reasoning, comprehension and certain types of learning. Working
memory differs from short-term memory (STM) in that it assumes both the storage and
manipulation of information, and in the emphasis on its functional role in complex cognition. A
range of different approaches to the study of working memory have developed with differences
reflecting the interests of the researcher, whether neuropsychological (Vallar, 2006),
neurobiological (O'Reilly et al., 1999), psychometric (Engle et al., 1999) or oriented towards
providing practical guidance on human factors (Kieras et al., 1999). Despite very different
theoretical methods and styles, there is general agreement on a need to assume a role for some
form of executive controller, probably of limited attentional capacity, aided by temporary
storage systems, with visual and verbal storage probably operating separately (Miyake & Shah,
1999). Such a structure had in fact been proposed by Baddeley and Hitch (1974). While
accepting that this is now one of range of models, the Baddeley and Hitch multicomponent
model provides a convenient structure for summarising research on working memory over the
30 years since it was first proposed.

Before moving on it is important to note that the term working memory was developed
independently in the study of animal learning where it refers to the type of learning or memory
thought to underpin tasks such as the radial arm maze, in which an animal has to remember
which of several arms have already been visited on that day, a task which we would regard as
depending on long-term memory (Olton, Becker & Handelmann, 1979).

The multicomponent model of working memory

In the 1960s there was a short period of consensus among researchers that human memory
consisted of a system that could be divided into two principal components. One was a shortterm store capable of holding small amounts of information for a few seconds. This fed into a
separate long-term store holding vast amounts of information over longer time intervals. This
so-called modal model could account for a range of experimental data and was able to account
for selective effects of different types of brain damage on short- and long-term recall.
Baddeley and Hitch (1974) set out to test the hypothesis that the short-term store also
functioned as a working memory. They did so by requiring participants to perform reasoning,
comprehension or learning tasks at the same time as they were holding in STM between 0 and 8
digits for immediate recall. If STM does function as a working memory, then loading it to
capacity should lead to massive disruption of cognitive processing. It did indeed cause some
disruption, with time to perform a reasoning task increasing with load, but the effect was not
huge, and there was no influence on error rate. Baddeley and Hitch (1974) therefore abandoned
the modal model, according to which STM is a unitary store, proposing instead a
multicomponent model assumes an attentional controller, the central executive aided by two
subsystems, the visuo-spatial sketchpad concerned with visual storage and processing, and its
acoustic/verbal equivalent, the phonological loop.

The phonological loop

This is the subsystem that is assumed to hold digit sequences for immediate recall. The fact that
reasoning was slowed as number of digits increased suggests that it does play a role in
reasoning, but the unchanged error rate indicates that it is not essential. It is assumed to have
two basic components, a temporary speech-related/acoustic store and a subvocal articulatory
rehearsal process.

The phonological store is indicated by the presence of the phonological similarity effect,
whereby people are much less accurate in repeating back sequences of similar-sounding words
such as MAN CAP CAT MAT CAN, than dissimilar words such as PIT DAY COW PEN TOP.
Similarity of meaning (HUGE LARGE BIG WIDE TALL) has little effect on immediate recall. On
the other hand if several trials are given to learn a longer list of say 10 words, meaning becomes
all-important and sound loses it power, consistent with different systems for short-term and
long-term storage (Baddeley, 1966a; 1966b).
Evidence for the importance of rehearsal comes from the word length effect, whereby immediate
recall of long words (e.g. REFRIGERATOR UNIVERSITY TUBERCULOSIS OPPORTUNITY
HIPPOPOTAMUS) is much more error-prone than for short words (Baddeley, Thomson &
Buchanan, 1975).
Baddeley and Hitch suggested that the memory trace of items in the short-term store would
rapidly fade, but could be maintained by saying them to oneself. Long words take longer to say,
allowing more fading and hence more forgetting to occur. Consistent with this interpretation,
preventing subjects from saying words to themselves by requiring the continuous utterance of
an item such as the word 'the', removes the word length effect. Since the initial demonstration of
the word length effect (Baddeley, Thomson and Buchanan, 1975) other interpretations have
been proposed, differing principally in the implications of the effect for whether items in the
short-term store are forgotten as a result of spontaneous decay of the memory trace, or by
disruption from later material (See Baddeley, 2007 Chapter 3 for a discussion).
The concept of the phonological loop has influenced a number of attempts to simulate human
performance in verbal STM tasks using more detailed computational models. The first tranche
of such models focused on specifying mechanisms for handling information about the serial
order of items, an aspect that was left unspecified in the original account of the loop. These
models tend to agree that serial ordering involves 'competitive queueing' (Grossberg, 1987), a
process whereby items are simultaneously active and compete for serial selection. The models
differ principally with respect to the nature of the ordering cues that determine these activation
levels (Burgess & Hitch, 1992; Page & Norris, 1998; Brown, Preece & Hulme, 2000). Recent
attempts at computational modelling have gone further by specifying how the short-term
phonological storage system interacts with long-term memory (Burgess & Hitch, 2006; see also
Botvinick & Plaut, 2006), an essential step to understanding the role of the loop in long-term
learning.

Function of the phonological loop

Given that one accepts the evidence for a temporary verbal or phonological memory system, the
question of its evolutionary significance arises. One possibility is that the phonological loop
supports the acquisition of language, providing a temporary means of storing new words, while
they are consolidated in phonological LTM (Baddeley, Gathercole & Papagno, 1998). Evidence
for this comes from the study of a patient with a very pure phonological STM deficit, who found
it extremely hard to learn to link new foreign words to their meaning, while performing
normally when learning to link pairs of words in her native language (Baddeley, Papagno &
Vallar, 1988).
A series of studies followed up this hypothesis. One study tested eight-year-old children with
specific language impairment (SLI), who had normal general intelligence but the language of
six-year-olds. They found it very difficult to repeat back nonwords such as SKITICULT. As they
showed no sign of impaired hearing or speech production , their deficit was attributed to
impaired phonological STM (Gathercole & Baddeley, 1990). Twin studies have shown that the
deficit in nonword repetition in SLI is inheritable, but that other deficits also contribute to the
disorder (Pennington & Bishop, 2009). Performance on nonword repetition also correlates
highly with the level of vocabulary development in young normal children although as children
get older, other factors such as intelligence and exposure to language become increasingly
important (Baddeley, Gathercole & Papagno, 1998). More recently, increasing attention has
been paid to the role of the phonological loop in controlling behavior through self-instruction
(Emerson & Miyake, 2003) a function initially emphasised by the Russian psychologists, Luria
(1959) and Vygotsky (1962).

The visuo-spatial sketchpad

The study of visuo-spatial STM has developed enormously in recent years and is very well
described in the entry by Luck, who suggests that its principal function is to create and maintain
a visuo-spatial representation that persists across the irregular pattern of eye movements that
characterise our scanning of the visual world.
Another function of the sketchpad is to create and maintain visual images of the type that we
might for example, use in attempting to answer questions such as whether the ears of a collie
dog are floppy or pricked, in describing the route from the station to home, or that an architect
might use to imagine a building he is designing. It has been shown that spatial tasks can
interfere with spatial skills such as driving a car, while a more purely visual activity such as

seeing a sequence of pictures or colour patches may interfere with capacity to remember objects
or shapes (Logie, 1986, Klauer & Zhao, 2004). Such results, together with the occurrence of
brain-damaged patients who show one deficit and not the other (Della Sala & Logie, 2002),
suggests that information about space, and about objects and their visual characteristics, may be
stored separately (See Luck's entry for further detail). It seems likely that the sketchpad may
also be involved in the storage of movement sequences, suggesting a capacity to store
kinaesthetic information as well as visuo-spatial (Smyth & Pendleton, 1990, Smyth & Scholey,
1992). The presence of similarities between storage of serial order in visual and verbal memory
suggests an analogous process, though not necessarily within a single system (Smyth et al.
2005).

The central executive

This is assumed to be an attentional control system of limited processing capacity that has the
role of controlling action. Baddeley (1986) adopted a model proposed originally by Norman and
Shallice (1986) which suggested that actions are controlled in two ways. Behavior that is routine
and habitual is controlled automatically by a range of schemas, well-learned processes that allow
us to respond appropriately to the environment. An experienced driver on a routine trip would
be a good example of this, sometimes arriving at the destination with no memory of the journey.
When such procedures are no longer adequate, for example finding the normal route blocked by
an accident, a second system, the Supervisory Attentional System (SAS) comes into operation.
This is capable of using long-term knowledge in order to set up possible solutions, and reflect on
them before choosing the best. In the case of our interrupted journey, this might involve the
central executive of working memory, probably in connection with LTM, the visuo-spatial
sketchpad, and possibly the phonological loop. In its original version, the central executive was
regarded as a general system capable of both processing and storage. In the interests of
parsimony Baddeley and Logie (1999) proposed that it had a purely attentional capacity.
Subsequent research has however, suggested the need to supplement the executive with a
separate storage system, the episodic buffer (Baddeley, 2000).
Although the term 'central executive' might suggest a single monolithic controller, it seems more
likely that it comprises an integrated alliance of executive control processes, probably including
the capacity to focus attention, to divide attention between two or more tasks, and to control
access to long-term memory (Baddeley, 2007; Baddeley et al., 1991; Logie et al, 2004), possibly
based on one or more types of inhibition (Engle et al, 1999; Miyake et al., 2000).

Executive functioning has been extensively investigated by Shallice (2002), particularly in

connection with its disruption following damage to the frontal lobes of the brain, a deficit
referred to as the dysexecutive syndrome. This may result in major problems of attentional
control, including sometimes repeatedly perseverating on a single action, while at others failing
to maintain a goal against distraction. In the case of memory, this may result in confabulation
where, in attempting to retrieve a memory, recall is captured by inappropriate associations,
sometimes resulting in totally false memories (Baddeley & Wilson, 1986).

The episodic buffer

The initial three-component model of working memory ran into problems in accounting for the
way in which the various subsystems could work together and in particular how they could
interface with long-term memory. To tackle this problem, Baddeley (2000) proposed a fourth
component, the episodic buffer (See Figure 1). This was assumed to be a temporary store of
limited capacity that was capable of combining a range of different storage dimensions, allowing
it to collate information from perception, from the visuo-spatial and verbal subsystems and
LTM. It was assumed to do so by representing them as multidimensional chunks or episodes,
which were assumed to be available to conscious awareness. The capacity to bind a range of
separate sensory channels into the perception of integrated objects is often regarded as an
important function of consciousness (e.g. Baars, 2002). Our investigation of this binding
function in recent years (Allen et al., 2006; Baddeley et al., 2009) has caused us to modify the
Baddeley (2000) model which predicts that disrupting the central executive will interfere with
binding. This is not the case, suggesting that the episodic buffer should be regarded as a passive
store, and that the processes of binding do not depend crucially on executive control. In this
respect, the current model differs from the proposal by Baars (1997) that consciousness operates
like a stage on which actors perform, replacing it with a concept more closely resembling that of
a screen on which the results of binding processes operating elsewhere can be projected and
utilised by the central executive. For a similar concept see Potter's (1993) idea of conceptual
short-term memory.
An alternative view of working memory is provided by Cowan who, postulates an attentional
system with a capacity of about four chunks as the central feature of working memory (Cowan,
1988;1995;1999;2001). Outside this central focus, short-term storage is assumed to depend on
activated long-term memory. Cowan's model could be seen as one way of specifying the
interaction between the central executive and the episodic buffer. Cowan's emphasis on working
memory as activated long-term memory might seem to provide a clear contrast with the
multicomponent model. The difference is however more apparent than real. Both assume that

interaction with LTM plays an important role, with the multicomponent model assuming that
such links operate at a number of different levels in ways that the simple concept of "activation"
fails to capture (Baddeley, 2009).
Cowan's work has however, raised some important, and as yet unresolved issues, including:
1. Modularity: could the apparent separation of visuospatial and verbal working memory
be accounted for on the basis of a more general principle of similarity-based interference
in activated long-term memory?
2. Capacity: Do storage and processing draw on a single limited capacity, as proposed in
the initial Baddeley and Hitch model, or are they separate, as in the episodic buffer
version?
3. Decay or Interference: Is information lost through temporal decay of the memory trace,
or is it displaced or over-written by other material?
These are not new questions, but have become issues of greatly renewed activity, largely as a
result of Cowan's ideas and his extensive experimental program.

Figure 1: Model of working memory

Individual differences in working memory

Daneman and Carpenter (1980) were interested in the role of working memory in
comprehension. They developed a task that involved simultaneously processing sentences and
remembering the last word of each, which they called working memory span. They found a
remarkably high correlation between performance on this task and measures of reading
comprehension in their college student participants. This predictive capacity has been replicated
many many times, and shown to generalise to a wide variety of tasks that combine temporary
storage with processing. Some of these tasks are quite complex, for example remembering words
that are sandwiched between arithmetical calculations (Turner & Engle, 1989), but even tasks
involving quite simple operations may correlate with measures such as scholastic achievement,
provided they involve combining memory and rapid processing (Lpine et al, 2005). There is
furthermore a very high correlation between tasks of this type and performance on conventional
intelligence tests based on reasoning capacity (Kyllonen & Christal, 1990). This has led a
number of groups to search for the crucial capacity that allows these apparently simple tasks to
predict such a wide range of cognitive skills. A summary of the current state of play in this area
is given in a book edited by Conway et al. (2008).
Probably the most sustained attempt to solve the problem of why working memory span
predicts so many cognitive tasks has come from Engle and his co-workers who have shown that
the capacity to predict cognitive function is not limited to memory tasks, but can also be found
in attentional control paradigms such as that involved in the antisaccade-task (See Kane et al.
2008). This task involves participants moving their eyes from a fixation point to a target as
rapidly as possible. Performance can be facilitated by a peripheral warning light occurring at the
point where the target will appear, as there is a strong tendency for the eye to move
automatically to a new stimulus. In a second condition however, rather than directly indicating
the location of the target, the warning light signals participants to move their eyes to the
opposite side. This information still proves helpful to high span but not low working memory
span participants. Based on this and a range of other studies Engle and colleagues argue that the
crucial feature of working memory is the capacity to maintain attention against distraction,
whether this is perceptual or comes from other sources such as earlier memories.
However, while Engle makes a strong case for an association between working capacity and the
ability to inhibit distracting stimuli, it is not clear that this is the only feature that characterises
working memory capacity; it may indeed be just one example of a number of functions of a more

general, multi-faceted attentional control system. Furthermore the concept of inhibition itself is
open to a range of interpretations at both a psychological and physiological level.
The fact that we still do not fully understand how these complex working memory span tasks
work does not, of course, mean that we can not use them profitably. Susan Gathercole and
colleagues used the multicomponent working memory model to develop a working memory
battery suitable for children of school age, using complex working memory span tasks as a
measure of central executive capacity and other tasks to assess phonological and visuo-spatial
subsystems. Factor analysis supported the multi-component model and showed that the
structure of the working memory system remains remarkably stable as children develop
(Gathercole, Pickering, Ambridge & Wearing, 2004). Although its capacity increases with age
(Case, Kurland & Goldberg, 1982), there are nevertheless marked developmental changes in the
way working memory is utilised. For example the developmental progression whereby the child
masters increasingly complex intellectual operations has been linked to the growth of central
executive capacity (Halford, 1993). There are also significant developmental changes in the
subsystems of working memory, the best known being the expansion in the range of operation of
the phonological loop, ranging from the development of the capacity for inner speech and
rehearsal strategies in children (Hitch, 2006) to the involvement of a wider range of aspects of
executive control in adults (Saeki & Saito, 2004).
Gathercole's test battery is able to identify children who are at risk of encountering academic
difficulties, with different patterns of working memory deficit associated with problems in
different subject areas. Careful observation of children at school has showed that children with
poor working memory skills tend to struggle because of a difficulty in following the sometimes
surprisingly complex instructions provided by teachers. They also have trouble in coping with
many of the techniques and strategies that are designed to help children cope, since these often
require additional working memory capacity. Such children resemble those characterised as
suffering from the attention deficit component of the ADHD syndrome. A programme that helps
teachers identify such children and optimise teaching methods has been developed (Gathercole
& Alloway, 2008).

Neural substrates of working memory

A good deal of research has been carried out on this topic, initially through the study of patients
with localised lesions and subsequently using neuroimaging methods. Broadly speaking, the
results fit the three-component model, with the phonological loop being represented in the left
hemisphere where storage is associated with a region in the temporoparietal junction
(Brodmann area 40), and rehearsal with the more anterior Brodmann area (44) that is known to

be associated with speech production (Paulesu, Frith & Frackowiak, 1993). The visuo-spatial
sketchpad appears to involve a number of predominantly right hemisphere areas, one visual,
presumably reflecting the processing and retention of objects and their visual features, a second
area is more parietal, presumably involving spatial aspects, while two frontal areas of activation
have been associated with control functions (Henson, 2001). There is general acceptance that
the frontal lobes play an important role in executive control, although opinions differ as to the
extent to which different executive functions may be separately localisable (Duncan & Owen,
2000; Shallice, 2002). There is as yet little evidence as to the localisation of the episodic buffer,
which seems likely to reflect a broadly distributed system which may possibly not give rise to
activation in any one specific area.

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